I’ve been using tiling WMs for some years now (mostly sway, but also tested cosmic a bit). I really love them: you theme workspaces and organize everything into them, and no window is ever hidden, which makes finding them trivial. But the cost of having every window displayed in that workspace is that they start getting way too small when you have a lot of them. This is usually not a big deal, since you can create tabs or just open new generic workspaces.

But what has been bugging me are windows that need to be big, otherwise they are unusable (like gimp, kdenlive, libreoffice, sometimes firefox). Tabbing them in fullscreen messes with the workspace layout, and if you dedicate an entire generic workspace for them, you surely will lose it.

That’s where scrollable WMs enter the scene. They respect window sizes at the cost of their visibility.

niri.gif

NGL, this is not a good idea. It’s easy to lose windows that are off-screen. But what if you only use it sometimes? Think of it as a regular tiling WM, but when you need it, it creates more space off-screen.

To achieve this, I’ve been using Niri with the tilemod script. It helps make Niri behave more like a regular tiling.

tilemod.gif

It’s been a good experience over the last week. My workflow is mostly unchanged, but when I need to work with a window in fullscreen, it’s always a relief that I’m using Niri.

Has anyone else here tried scrollables? I’m in this excitement phase so I want to read more about it (even from people who tried and didn’t like them) :)

  • KindaABigDyl@programming.dev
    11·
    11 hours ago

    I freaking love niri

    It’s easy to lose windows that are off-screen

    By default. They should really change the defaults, but in config, you can make it so if there is a window to the side hidden, a piece is always visible.

    It’s called struts.

    layout {
    ...
    struts {
         left 16
         right 16
     }
}

    It ensures a piece of the window is always visible

    Plus with a bar like from QuickShell or WayBar you can see all open windows anyway up there.

    To achieve this, I’ve been using Niri with the tilemod script. It helps make Niri behave more like a regular tiling.

    The things you show in the gif are already possible with niri via Super + [ and Super + ] (default bindings) for placing into columns

    It has limitations, but everything in the gif at least is already there. Niri actually has quite a bit of support for base tiling.

    I can’t go back to non-scrolling ever. I even use a similar setup on my work machine (a Mac) via PaperWM.spoon, tho it isn’t as well integrated (bc it’s a mac and you’re forcing it to not be a mac)

    EDIT: One tiling feature of niri I love is that with Super + W you can switch to a stacked mode like in a tiler. For KiCAD PCB editing, you have three windows - project, schematic, and pcb. It is essential that at the very least the project tab be stacked behind and out of the way imo, since there is no minimize

    • SoftBun@lemmy.mlOPEnglish
      2·
      10 hours ago

      The things you show in the gif are already possible with niri via Super + [ and Super + ] (default bindings) for placing into columns

      Yup! I know about it. The script just makes it automaticaly:

      • If there are fewer than N (default 2) windows in the focused column, it adds a new one there. Otherwise, it creates a new column.
      • It also auto-fullscreens a window if it’s the only one in the workspace.

      One tiling feature of niri I love is that with Super + W you can switch to a stacked mode like in a tiler.

      I use it for my tens of freetube windows :)

      I can’t go back to non-scrolling ever.

      Wow! For how long have you been using scrollers?